Taste Cannonau di Sardegna, the red wine of Oliena and the Barbagia, at the Cantina Sociale Oliena

Learn to make culurgiones, the pasta parcels filled with potato and pecorino, with a family in the Barbagia

Eat porceddu, the spit-roasted suckling pig, at an agriturismo near Oliena

Taste Pecorino Sardo at a cheese farm in the Barbagia, and buy a round with the crackling pane carasau bread

Oliena sits under Monte Corrasi in the Barbagia and gives its name to the Cannonau grown around it. This is the eating and drinking end of the island: culurgiones, the pasta parcels of potato and pecorino folded by hand, porceddu turned on a spit, Pecorino Sardo from the hill dairies and pane carasau, the bread baked thin enough to crack.

Oliena and the Barbagia: Cannonau, Culurgiones and Porceddu

Walk the streets of Orgosolo and look at the murals on its walls, painted from 1969, on the village's politics and history

Listen to a cantu a tenore, the four-part polyphonic singing of the Barbagia on UNESCO's list of intangible heritage since 2005, at a performance in the Barbagia

Walk up Monte Novo San Giovanni above Orgosolo, the hill with its church, at the edge of the Supramonte

Eat pane carasau, roast lamb and porceddu at an agriturismo in the Barbagia

Orgosolo has carried painted murals on its walls since 1969, more than a hundred and fifty of them, most of them political and spanning decades of argument. The village sits at the edge of the Supramonte under Monte Novo San Giovanni, in the Barbagia, which is also the home ground of cantu a tenore, the four-part singing on UNESCO’s intangible heritage list since 2005.

Orgosolo: The Murals and Monte Novo San Giovanni

Pick a Mamuthone out of the line and read the costume: the visera, a black wooden face mask, black sheepskins, and the carriga, the bank of cowbells carried on the back

Watch the step rather than the costume — small measured paces, almost hops, with the whole line throwing a shoulder together and turning the body so every bell sounds at once

Count the group: twelve Mamuthones to eight Issohadores, the Issohadore in a white mask and red curittu with a bandolier of small bronze bells, carrying the soha, the rope he throws over people in the crowd

Go round the Museo delle Maschere Mediterranee in the village and set the Mamoiada masks against the others of Sardinia and the wider Mediterranean

Mamoiada in the Barbagia is where the Mamuthones come out: twelve of them in black wooden masks and black sheepskins, carrying banks of cowbells on their backs, herded by eight Issohadores in white masks and red curittu who throw a rope over the crowd. They move in short measured steps and throw a shoulder together so every bell sounds at once, and the parade runs from the afternoon into the late evening. The village museum sets their masks against the others of Sardinia and the Mediterranean.

Mamoiada: The Mamuthones and the Mask Museum

Walk in along the Rio Flumineddu, the river that cut the gorge, and keep going to where the floor closes to about four metres across with over five hundred metres of limestone standing above you

Choose the approach before you start and know what it costs on the way back: four kilometres down from the SS125 near Urzulei, every metre of which has to be climbed again, or seven flatter kilometres up the valley from the S’Abba Arva bridge near Dorgali

Find where the gorge floor carries the boundary between the comuni of Orgosolo and Urzulei, two territories that meet in the bottom of it

Turn round at the marked limit rather than scrambling past it — the waymarked route is graded EEA, the rock is polished where the water runs, and the upper gorge needs equipment

The Gola di Gorropu was cut by the Rio Flumineddu through the limestone of the Supramonte and runs along the boundary between the comuni of Orgosolo and Urzulei. Its walls rise to over five hundred metres and the floor narrows to four metres at the tightest points. Two paths reach it: four kilometres down from the SS125 near Urzulei, and a longer but flatter seven kilometres up the Flumineddu valley from the S’Abba Arva bridge near Dorgali.

Su Gorropu: The Canyon Under the Supramonte

Take the motorboat in from Cala Gonone and walk the kilometre of boardwalk through the southern branch — one of three the cave splits into past a shared entrance, in a system running over twenty kilometres

Find the engraved figures on the walls, about twenty human shapes put at the end of the Eneolithic, between 2100 and 1800 BC

Stand at the salt lake inside, over a square kilometre of it, which the Italian record calls among the largest in the world

Swim at Cala Luna on the way back, and take in that the cave is named for the monk seal, now reckoned gone from this coast under the weight of people

The Grotte del Bue Marino open on the Gulf of Orosei below Dorgali and run for more than twenty kilometres, splitting into three branches past a shared entrance. Motorboats from Cala Gonone reach the southern branch, where a kilometre of boardwalk passes a salt lake of over a square kilometre and about twenty human figures cut into the rock at the end of the Eneolithic. The cave is named for the monk seal, now reckoned gone from this coast.

The Gulf of Orosei by Boat: Bue Marino and Cala Luna

Taste Fiore Sardo at a dairy around Gavoi — made only from the milk of Sardinian-breed sheep, and a Slow Food presidium

Find a whole round and look at the shape that names it: a double truncated cone, somewhere between one and a half and four kilos

Taste it young against a round matured past six months, which is the point at which it stops being a table cheese and becomes one for grating

Work out the ground it comes from: Gavoi with Austis, Ovodda, Tiana, Teti, Ollolai, Lodine and Olzai, the comuni of the Barbagia di Ollolai, and ask at the dairy which of them its milk came from

Fiore Sardo is made only from the milk of Sardinian-breed sheep and has been DOP since 1996, pressed into a double truncated cone of between one and a half and four kilos. Young it is a table cheese; past six months of maturing it turns into one for grating. Its origin is traced to Gavoi and the villages around it — Austis, Ovodda, Tiana, Teti, Ollolai, Lodine and Olzai — the comuni of the Barbagia di Ollolai, and Slow Food keeps a presidium on it.

Gavoi: Fiore Sardo in the Barbagia Hills

Get down onto the shore at the Rocce Rosse and find where the red porphyry gives way to granite — the beach is made of both, and the colour is the rock itself, not the light

Swim off the rocks below the red cliffs, where the water goes deep close in

Take the Trenino Verde out of Arbatax, the terminus of the narrow-gauge line to Mandas, run for tourists alone since 1997

Settle the name while you wait for the train: Arbatax is read as the Arabic for fourteen, after a watchtower, as the Latin arbutus for the strawberry tree, or after the Baccasara watercourse — nobody agrees

Arbatax is a port on the Ogliastra coast, a frazione of Tortolì, where the shore is built of granite and red porphyry and the cliffs above it take their colour from the rock rather than the light. It is also the terminus of the narrow-gauge line to Mandas, run for tourists alone since 1997 as the Trenino Verde. Even the name is unsettled, read variously as Arabic for fourteen, as the Latin for the strawberry tree, or after a watercourse.

Arbatax: The Red Rocks and the Trenino Verde

Walk the paths of the Parco Naturale Regionale Molentargius-Saline in Cagliari, the wetland of old salt pans, and look for the pink flamingos

Walk the Poetto beach beside Molentargius, the long city beach of Cagliari, with the flamingos in the lagoon behind it

Climb the Sella del Diavolo, the Devil's Saddle headland above the Poetto, for the view over the Gulf of Cagliari

Walk the Castello district, the old walled quarter above Cagliari, and its Torre di San Pancrazio

The Parco Naturale Regionale Molentargius-Saline is a wetland of worked-out salt pans on the edge of Cagliari, and the pink flamingos stand in it within sight of the city. The long Poetto beach runs along the seaward side, the Sella del Diavolo headland closes the end of it, and the walled Castello quarter with the Torre di San Pancrazio looks down on the lot from above the old town.